Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
I think you calumnize the DRC.
By that you mean this?

calumny
A false statement maliciously made to injure another's reputation. 2. The utterance of maliciously false statements; slander. ...
If so, I will just say that I believe I have earned my opinions on the DRC through long study, extensive writing, and living through some of its chaos. Since I refer to Kinshasa in my memoirs as an old whore as I saw her in 1994, malice perhaps. False statements, nope, not when compared to what she looked like in 1984. A Belge-American who brought his parents over for the first time since they unassed in 1960 said they simply broke down and started crying at the state of the Congo. Stan has years longer on the ground than I and he is tougher on the place than I am. Give him a few beers and he will really tell you what he thinks. As for injuring the reputation, it is hard to find a worse reputation; you pretty much have to start with Somalia and then the DRC comes next in the ladder of chaos.

I would say that Zimbabwe is not far behind. The real issue is no longer Bob--it is Bob's thugs, several generations of them. They will not go gently into the night when Bob does the place a favor by dying, whatever the cause.

Tom